The BBC has a claim from Pakistan’s ISI that, if true, ought to put the torture debate to bed once and for all. ISI claims that they raided the compound in Abbottabad in 2003, while it was under construction, believing they’d capture Abu Faraj al-Libi.

The ISI official told the BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones in Islamabad that the compound in Abbottabad, just 100km (62 miles) from the capital, was raided when under construction in 2003.

It was believed an al-Qaeda operative, Abu Faraj al-Libi, was there.

The key detail is not so much the raid itself, it’s that when al-Libi lived in Abbottabad, ISI believed, he was at the compound at which Osama bin Laden would eventually be found.

As I pointed out yesterday, al-Libi’s Detainee Assessment Brief recounts that Osama bin Laden instructed al-Libi via a courier in 2003 that he would basically take over for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In July 2003, detainee received a letter from UBL’s designated courier, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan, requesting detainee take on the responsibility of collecting donations, organizing travel, and distributing funds to families in Pakistan. UBL stated detainee would be the official messenger between UBL and others in Pakistan.

Either right before or right after that order from OBL, al-Libi moved with his family to Abbottabad for a year.

In mid-2003, detainee moved his family to Abbottabad, PK and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar.

[snip]

In mid 2004, detainee moved his family from Abbottabad to Bajaur, PK.

And at some point during that year, the Pakistanis raided the compound which was already under construction.

As I suggested yesterday, all this may suggest that al-Libi oversaw the construction of the compound that would go on to shelter OBL and his family for up to six years.

And in any case, it seems to confirm that al-Libi not only knew the courier who could locate OBL, but knew of the actual location OBL would go on to occupy (while this doesn’t necessarily confirm al-Libi would know OBL would occupy it, remember that OBL is reported to have moved to the compound in 2005, so in the same year al-Libi was captured).

Now, we can’t say one way or another whether skilled interrogation would have yielded this information in 2005. It’s possible al-Libi would have successfully shielded it in any case. But if the ISI report is even remotely accurate, it seems clear that al-Libi sat in our custody for six years, knowing of the location that might house OBL, and never disclosed it.

Update: If these CBS satellite pictures are labeled accurately, ISI couldn’t have done a raid on the compound in 2003, because it was still a field. (h/t RS) Which I guess leaves the question why ISI wants to claim they were close to al-Libi in 2003?

Update: Here are a series of images from cryptome, though the 2004 one is still the same.

I believe at least a fourth person was waterboarded or planned to be, though possibly under DOD custody.

I speculated that al-Libi might have been the fourth in this post some time back. But if CIA planned to waterboard, it appears they didn’t do it. Though they may have threatened him with it while water dousing him.

What nationality was al-Libi?
Where was the money for the house in Abbottabad coming from?
If the ISI was interested in the house, and al-Libi, in 2003, then either they were monitoring the house since then, or they “lost interest” in it for some reason. Either possibility has its own interesting implications.

The “al-Libi” in both his and Ibn SHeikh al-Libi’s nom de guerre means “Libyan.”

And yes, one of the reasons I’m surprised ISI said this is that it doesn’t seem to help their case. If they raided the compound while it was being built, then how did they miss what was by all accounts a fortress after it was built?

No one I know, just ordinary folk one talks to, doesn’t think bin Laden couldn’t have been caught long ago.

I believe, and I think you said this yourself, if I’m not mistaken, that the Wikileaks release forced their hand. They knew about that release months ago, time enough to decide to train for the mission, and take out bin Laden. And no one I know doesn’t think it was anything but a kill mission. Just folk wisdom, I know, but…

EW already answered, but I’d just add that many of those secondary names that start with al- and end in i are geographic names. The term is a ‘nisbah’ or descriptor name, and it needn’t always be geographic. “Khalid al-Masri” is the Egyptian, al-Kuwaiti is self-explanatory, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, one of Saddam Hussein’s brothers, was “from Tikrit”. Gaddhafi is from the Gaddafa tribe.

(There’s a store or brand “Isaac Mizrahi” – that’s the same thing in Hebrew, Mizrahi meaning Egyptian. I’m studying a little Hebrew because my new wife is Jewish, and I’ve been noticing how similar some Arabic terms are. I had a fun breakthrough during the Egyptian uprising, when I suddenly put together the name of the English language Egyptian paper I was reading – al-Masry al-Youm — I recognized Mizrahi and Yom as Hebrew words and realized the paper as “Egypt Today”. I mentioned this to my mother-in-law at Passover. It didn’t seem to be a similarity she was interested in learning more about!)

I find it helpful because I find it very hard to keep track of these names, and if I can at least pin down some of the meanings, that makes it a little more likely I’ll distinguish from something else that to my western ears sounds the same. I thought I’d answer with a little more info in case it helps you too.

I should have known al-Libi meant “the Libyan,” but didn’t stop to think. I’ve been to Israel, Palestine and Gaza, so I should have known better. But I’m sure someone else will benefit from your kind explanation!

For the past two years, American spies had been monitoring the courier, known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, after learning his name four years ago, according to US officials.

When al-Kuwaiti made a phone call in 2010, he unknowingly led the Americans to the doorstep of the world’s most wanted terrorist. He was said to have been among those killed alongside Osama bin Laden in yesterday’s dramatic raid.

Secret American military files from Guantanamo Bay, leaked to Wikileaks and seen by The Daily Telegraph, suggest that al-Kuwaiti may have been with bin Laden ever since he disappeared from the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan in 2001.

The file for the Guantanamo detainee, Muhammad Mani al-Qahtani, who was to have been the “20th hijacker” on 9/11, contains a reference to the key US intelligence thread that led directly to bin Laden…

So the first two points come from from finished intelligence reports, the rest from intelligence reports written in years after al-Qahtani’s torture (the exception is TD-314/39130-02).

So who did that come from?

Also, the Telegraph seems to have an odd idea of the training of detainees. There was a lot of pressure to get enough bodies to the US for this op, and al-Qahtani would have gotten there far later than anyone else. So he seems to have missed what was formally the training process for the other muscle hijackers. That doesn’t mean al-Kuwaiti wasn’t involved, just that it was a chaotic time and al-Qahtani was an add on after the others.

Interesting theory–it’d provide one explanation for why he was “freed.” I”m skeptical though, bc of all the docs on torture that relate to him specifically. We’re pretty sure he was tortured in our custody.

Though one of the reason his treatment was so sensitive is because he was a ghost detainee in military custody in a country we occupied. Hopefully Mary or powwow will come by and explain why that’s an even bigger war crime than some of our others.

Forgive me if this has already come up, but I haven’t seen it. It occurred to me while listening to John Kerry dance around the question of whether the ISI or anyone else in the Pakistani gov’t knew that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. Kerry refused to “go there” and I started wondering why.

Didn’t the AUMF say that the Preznit could attack anyone sheltering those who were behind 9/11? Isn’t that the equivalent of declaring war on anyone sheltering bin Laden? So wouldn’t evidence that Pakistan knew that bin Laden was in Abbottabad be a trigger for the US being at war with Pakistan?

BTW, another part of the OBL legend has bit the dust and will affect recruiting:

OBL died, not in a cave surrounded by mujahedin, but in a million-dollar house in a wealthy city. Not quite a man of the people. I wonder how the Arab Street will treat that information.

But actually, it seems like the Arab street has moved on. While agreeing with OBL that the corrupt governments of the Middle East have got to go, they have rejected OBL’s tactics (except maybe in Libya) in favor of something rather different.

OBL has become irrelevant– to the Arabs. But still useful here in America as a political football, apparently.

You can pull up real estate files for Abbottabad. You can find much nicer two-story houses with high walls that actually look good for $35,000. ($3 million Rs at about 85 rupees to the dollar) There’s no way that house was worth 30 times as much just because it was 3 stories and had a little land.

I read Three Cups of Tea just before the Krakow “take-down”. (And I don’t know what to think about that.)

But anyway, in the book, there several compounds mentioned that frankly, I envisioned while reading it as looking pretty much exactly like this – high, drab walls with barbed wire or embedded bottle fragments. The guy who stored building materials for the first school – I figured they were stored in something like this. The militant village where Mortenson was briefly sequestered, I pictured him being in a place like this.

I imagine you’re being somewhat sarcastic, but I thought I’d answer seriously – this place just doesn’t look that surprising to me. If I ran into it in a middle-sized town in Mexico (and I surmise that’s a relevant comparison in terms of the security needs of the middle-class) I might not look twice. I have no real knowledge of Pakistan, so take with a huge grain of salt. But then, neither do most of the commentators who are saying this is a huge mansion and that the inordinate security “must have attracted attention” from Pak officials.

Looks like a typical third-world middle of the road (not in the poor districts) house that you see when you travel…barbed wire on walls is not uncommon..you see it all the time in places like Haiti. In fact, it looks a lot like parts of Haiti.

Haiti is an entirely different setting. There’s virtually no functional government in Haiti, so probably no functional security– except for razor wire. Haiti has been a country in civil chaos since the hurricane, if not before. Not so with Pakistan.

I wasn’t being sarcastic. I agree that the compound accords well with what I have seen in the Middle East. What exceeds the norm, in my experience, is
* the third floor (a sign of extra wealth)
* the razor wire on top of the wall.

I might expect the razor wire in today’s Baghdad, but Abbottabad was an upscale community crawling with retired military. I would not expect security to be such a high level of concern for home-owners as to require razor wire in such a setting. What you saw in Three Cups of Tea is a pretty good yardstick, except that Abbottabad might be more upscale.

ISI could certainly be trying to cover its tracks in an embarrassing situation.

This report makes not real sense. If they suspected Al-Libi might be there during the construction, and the place appeared highly fortified after construction, then, why didn’t they more closely monitor the place from that point on?

In addition, if they had raided the construction site, it is certain OBL never would have occupied the place after completion.

Here is another intriguing question:

If they followed the courier to find where OBL was staying, there certainly HAD to be something at the OTHER end of the courier’s travels. He gave whatever he had from OBL to SOMEBODY and that somebody should have been either another top official, OR another courier on his way to another top official.

Also troubling me are the claims with the DNA testing being basically impossible for it to not be Bin Laden, but these claims of certainty aren’t based on Bin Laden’s DNA but rather on DNA from his family members. All the DNA results mean – if taken at face value – is that a member of Bin Laden’s family died, not necessarily Bin Laden himself. What has been used in support of this is because supposedly his wife IDed him…well, why believe what she said was truthful? Based on the on the Gitmo files – as well as common sense – just because someone allegeding to be OBLs wife alleges a body is OBL, doesn’t therefore make it so. I’m not saying OBL is alive right now, just the story smells.

According to this timeline Obama addressed the world and got rid of the body before it had even finished being DNA tested:http://www.npr.org/2011/05/03/135951504/timeline-the-raid-on-osama-bin-ladens-hideout
That seems reckless in the extreme to make an announcement to the entire world before it has been fully vetted. If all that had happened was true why in the world not announce on Monday after the DNA results are back?

The “militant hideout” tweet came after the raid. If you look at the tweets in the techcrunch story, you’ll see that that particular one came an hour after the others all of which were prompted by a news story about the raid, which caused a guy who wasn’t in Abbottabad to begin tweeting to try to figure out what happened and whether his family was okay. So all this proves is that Pakistani security was telling locals it was a militant hideout after they’d had a chance to see 4 dead bodies and talk to the 18 survivors left behind about who it was that had been killed. Not particularly meaningful.

And Spanish Inquisition, I believe they’ve got DNA samples from several relatives, allowing triangulation. He has no full brothers, and some parts of the genome (mtDNA, Y-chromosome) are not recombinant, so you can put someone in a particular “crosshair” slot in the family tree if you match both. H He’s also unusually tall, they used facial recognition software, and the guys in the attack seemed to think he looked like the right guy. That’s a lot of evidence. Most bodies are ID’d by sight and nothing else.

The “militant hideout” tweet came after the raid. If you look at the tweets in the techcrunch story, you’ll see that that particular one came an hour after the others all of which were prompted by a news story about the raid, which caused a guy who wasn’t in Abbottabad to begin tweeting to try to figure out what happened and whether his family was okay. …Not particularly meaningful.

Yikes, thank you very much for cleaning up after my sloppiness. I should have checked that before I commented. Appreciate your accuracy ;-)

“And Spanish Inquisition, I believe they’ve got DNA samples from several relatives, allowing triangulation. He has no full brothers, and some parts of the genome (mtDNA, Y-chromosome) are not recombinant, so you can put someone in a particular “crosshair” slot in the family tree if you match both. H He’s also unusually tall, they used facial recognition software, and the guys in the attack seemed to think he looked like the right guy. That’s a lot of evidence. Most bodies are ID’d by sight and nothing else.”

That does not explain away making the announcement before the DNA testing was done – what was the point of the DNA testing then? Even with local police matters police departments may give their speculation, but they don’t claim to have posiitvely IDed a body until the test results are in. If the story is to be believed, it’s totally reckless to make an announcement before all the tests were in.

Some people are saying the kind of tests they ran could have been done in about 5 hours once they had samples from him; everything else could have been ready ahead of time, likely as part of the preparations.

I was surprised by many such things. Wouldn’t they have considered defending in depth, by putting someone else in a house across the street who might have a clear line of fire at the upper floor doorways in this house? Did no one in al-Qaeda think of using an IED or two to defend bin Laden’s residence? That’s stunning to me.

Honestly, these guys seem a bit amateurish. And I mean that. I’ve long felt bin Laden was a bit of a one-trick pony. People would tell me we need the airport security so there’s not another 9/11, and I’d patiently attempt to explain that 9/11 wasn’t just a hijacking — the hijackers entered the cockpits and piloted the planes. The security doors on planes now make that impossible, and so we’re really back in 1974 – when there were quite a few successful hijackings, and yet we didn’t have to give up any freedom. Because losing a planeful of people to a hijacker would be gross and awful, but it’s not really as big a deal as losing a building with more than 2,000 people in it. That was the spectacle they achieved once, but could never even approach after that. I’ve also felt that a bright enemy could think of other scenarios for attacks, and as each year passed and nothing happened, I just thought less and less of their competence.